


Not Afraid to Die

by onlybylaura



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Die Together, F/M, Mutual Pining, You know just the usual, a small one shot from rey's POV, and yes this is a battle of geonosis parallel THANK YOU FOR NOTICING, ben is just DESPERATE, dramatic declarations of love, get arrested together, i'm just out here living my best life, if you are into this kind of thing, rey is a small ball of anger, they're also chained side by side, this is all over the top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 16:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14265501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlybylaura/pseuds/onlybylaura
Summary: When her attempt at a daring rescue fails, Rey is chained side by side with Ben Solo. While both of them await for a trial and the spectacle that is surely to come from their execution, they must confront their feelings for each other.





	Not Afraid to Die

The First Order had chained them side by side.

Rey stood stiff, her metal shackles heavy on her wrists. She needed a plan to get out of here, and she needed it fast. Rey didn’t want to look at her side and see what was there. She knew exactly what she would find.

Ben didn’t move, as if trying to purposefully ignore that she was there.

It didn’t matter. She didn’t want to be here anyway.

She rattled against the chains, wondering what was outside. What were the First Order plans now that they had both Rey and Ben locked up.

“They are not going to come off,” Ben said by her side.

She looked up, frowning. She could punch him if the chains weren’t stopping her. Maybe that was the true punishment. Being by his side with no weapon, with nothing at all. It was a mix of rage and despair, a feeling that hadn’t vanished even after she’d faced him again when he hadn’t been deposed as Supreme Leader yet.

Three months later, and they were both here, on the First Order’s basement, ready for their judgement.

Ready for punishment.

Rey reached out again to twist her cuffs, but they weren’t going anywhere. They didn’t look like they could even shift, and she had nothing to pry them loose. A red beep made sure that the chains were controlled.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“You don’t say,” Rey replied sarcastically.

Ben looked at her. She allowed herself to stare back. His dark hair was plastered against his forehead. His clothes were roughened up, and there was a bloody cut on his lower lip. He was still as she remembered him, and there was a dull ache inside her chest, something she didn’t want to acknowledge.

If he had come with her and saved the Rebel fleet, none of this would have happened.

“You have…”  he indicated a cut on her cheek. Rey wiped it in her upper arms against her sleeve, and it came away red.

“Did they hurt you?” He asked.

“Took away my lightsaber,” she replied in the most neutral tone she could muster. “Not before I could kick most of them."

There was a shadow of a smile on his lips. He almost looked proud of her.

Rey didn’t let herself entertain that thought, looking away again before her feelings got the better of her. She fought with all she could, but still she ended up here, chained in a strange basement next to Ben Solo.

Her chains weren’t moving, and for a minute, Rey let herself feel despair. She had no lightsabre. Her friends didn’t know where she was. And she was chained next to the last person she ever wanted to be with in the whole galaxy.

She was going to have to wait for a miracle. Fear started to rise, but she gulped it down, not giving in. Fear led to anger, which led to hate. She would not have dark feelings take control of her, even though she wanted to scream.

This was her own fault and she knew it. If only she hadn’t come here after him. Her foolish, foolish heart.

“What do you think will happen to us?” Rey asked.

“I don’t know,” Ben answered with the truth.

Rey closed her eyes, easing her heartbeat. She took deep breaths, slowing it down, feeling everything around her. There was the cell, the chains, and beyond that, a crowd of thousands of heartbeats that waited for her outside. For a spectacle.

When she opened her eyes again, she was free of feeling. The exercise had calmed her, and she still felt the Force with her. Whatever her fate, she would find a way.

“Rey, I—” Ben started to say, but right at that moment, a Stormtrooper came in, pointing his gun at them.

Behind them, another dozen emerged, all with weapons ready.

“Start walking,” the leader said, pointing the gun at their backs. Other Stormtroopers moved in, and Ben was silenced.

Rey walked forward with him to the platform. She could feel the heat of his body. A couple of inches and their shoulders would be touching. The platform started moving, and the stormtroopers were a block with them, walking with one single purpose.

When they came to the light, Rey saw.

It was an arena. Thousands of people, in First Order uniforms and Stormtrooper gear filled the seats. She couldn’t even begin to understand, and they shouted and cheered when they came into sight.

The platform displayed them both as prisoners, floating forwards, the drums thumping in the background with an executioner’s march. The noise was deafening, but Rey kept looking forward, her chin raised high. She stood unblinking. She would not back down.

At the highest platform, right in front of them, Hux stood. He was ranked by the First Orders highest officials. He looked down at them with disgust.

Rey and Ben were taken from the floating platform, the stormtroopers yanking them towards the posts that stood in the middle of the sandy ground. The sound and noise echoes all around them, and at last, Rey was chained with her hands up, standing in the middle of the arena.

So this is how they would die. Executed by monsters, or what not. A spectacle for all the First Order to watch as she fought with her hands and her mind until there wasn’t a single drop of blood left.

Hux walked forward, and all the noise ceased at his gesture.

“It is time,” he said, “to enter yet a new age. The First Order conquered, and it triumphed over its enemies and disbelievers. It has no use for old religions. We walk to a new age, where such nonsense is not needed.”

Everyone around them cheered. Rey rattled against her chains, seeing if she could break free.

Hux gestured, and everyone was silent.

“I present to you the last of the Jedi,” he said. “After their punishment, the Jedi will no longer exist. They have no place in our new world.”

People cheered again. Rey looked to the left, where Ben was standing. He didn’t look shocked by Hux’s betrayal or the fact that he was no longer the Supreme Leader.

“It wasn’t meant to be this way,” Ben said by her side. He met her eyes for the first time. “It was a—”

“Trap, I know.”

Rey watched as realization dawned on his eyes.

“You knew it was a trap and you still came?”

Rey gave the smallest of shrugs. “I said I would help you.”

Ben blinked. His dark eyes were like they had been that night in Ahch-To, when they touched hands for the first time. When there was nothing but that promise between them. The promise that they weren’t going to be alone.

“I’m sorry.”

Rey turned sharply to him. It was like Hux and the First Order no longer mattered, nothing but background noise. There was just the two of them, facing each other, when they were about to die.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Rey replied.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ben said. “You shouldn’t have to face this.”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

And as she said it, she knew it was true. That one moment she’d seen, with them side by side. Maybe this is what it meant.

But she wasn’t afraid, if this meant death.

“But as I’m a merciful leader,” Hux shouted, and Rey noticed that she was so concentrated on Ben that she hadn’t seen he was still talking. “I will offer them an alternative. Not death by monsters, or anything else, but we’ll let them choose.”

Hux opened a cruel smile, a sneer that stretched all his featured.

“Whoever kills the other first,” he announced, “will be spared.”

Rey locked eyes with Ben. Her heart was racing inside her chest, thundering against her ribcages. Ben looked back at her, shattered.

The Stormtroopers approached, unlocking them from their bonds. Rey dropped to the ground, flickering her wrists. They handed her the lightsabre, but it was all mechanic, her gestures automated because her brain couldn’t process what Hux had said.

Not this.

Never this.

The Stormtroopers circled the arena. Over a hundred of them, weapons at the ready. Rey counted them in her head, thinking of an exit strategy. Thinking of any way she could avoid this outcome.

Rey and Ben faced each other in the middle of the arena, lightsabers in hand. Her fingers trembled, her breath hitched.

She only had eyes for Ben.

“Two enemies,” Hux said, from his podium. “Two mortal enemies facing each other, ready to bring the other down. This is truly the end.”

The crowd cheered again. They had come for a spectacle.

They were going to get one.

The Stormtroopers readied their weapons. Their stance was clear. If they didn’t move, they would be executed. They had to fight each other.

It was the only way.

Before she realized, her lightsaber was lit up. Ben mimicked her movement.

They circled each other, waiting. Waiting for the first person to make the right step. Wrong step. Rey didn’t know which.

She went in first. Raised her lightsaber, and Ben defended himself. Red against blue, in opposition.

Rey raised her eyes to meet his.

And then the world stopped. Rey’s heart slowed, and she felt the bond lock into place again. She’d almost forgotten what that was like, after shutting herself to him for a long time. The bond was time slowing, and nothing else mattered. An electric current that jolted from her body and straight to her heart. The background was silent, and she could only hear Ben’s breath.

“Kill me,” he said, only loud enough for her to hear. Rey wasn’t sure if he had really said it out loud, or just in her mind. “Do it. And you can get out.”

“No.”

Ben frowned.

“I’m not leaving you behind.”

Ben’s eyes widened in slight surprise.

It took a second, but Rey made her decision. She lowered her defences around her mind and let everything go.

Her fears. Her feelings. What made her come here in the first place, when she heard he was about to be executed for treason. The conflict she still lived, not daring to name what she felt.

She let him see it, raw and true. What she was scared of. Her heartbreak over the last time they saw each other.

Rey gulped down, her mouth feeling like sandpaper.

They turned off their lightsabers at the same time. The crowd waited, confused, their silence uneasy.

Ben reached out to her first. His lips touched hers and it was an explosion of feelings, her stomach turning, her knees weak. She kissed him back as if nothing else mattered. There was nothing else like this. He tasted of blood, and salt, and of home.

Somehow, it felt just right.

They broke apart, Rey’s heart skipping beats inside her chest, hammering out like a song.

But when she looked at Ben, she knew. That no matter what, she’d find a way. They’d make it out alive.

“Rey, I—”

“I know, Ben.”

He smiled at her.

She took a deep breath. Ready to die, ready to get out of here.

“They want a spectacle,” she said. She could feel the crowd around them uncertain, even Hux shouting orders. “Let’s give them one.”

The Stormtroopers moved in the background, readying weapons. Rey grippes her lightsaber tight in her hand.

She looked again at Ben. Reaching out for his hair, his touch. But all she needed was the reassurance she saw in those eyes, the way they didn’t blink, and the way they didn’t look anywhere else but her.

“Are you with me?” She asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” he replied.

That was all she needed.

Rey turned her back to him, and she could feel him doing the same. Their enemies approached, weapons raised, ready to start a shootout. Ready to execute an extermination.

But all she needed was right here with her. She had faith.

She wasn’t alone.

 

 

 


End file.
